Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Ephesians chapter six gives the receptive Christ-follower some solid spiritual protein. When Jesus mentioned an idea or command three times in quick succession, he was telling his listener(us) that this is important information. To a student, it would be as if a professor said, "Pay attention, this will be on the exam." Vs. 11 begins with his first command to "Put on the whole armor of God." Paul also mentioned this theme of God's armor at the start of his letter to the Romans, demonstrating once again, the high importance of the concept. Here, he reveals his purpose in adopting this military theme, "that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil." He places the devil here in the role a shifty, itinerant confidence man who engages the hapless pilgrim in conversation along the way. Inevitably, the conversation will wend its way into a conspiratorial grousing fest; oh, the deceiver agrees completely with the traveler's complaints about the weather, the road's condition, the danger of bandits, the intolerable Roman occupation, any pet peeve that will set the traveler's mind into a negative tail-spin. The devil veils his strategy with false empathy, bonding with the traveler in their seemingly common struggle against the System's unfairness. And of course, God is the System's distant, unapproachable, unsympathetic and judgmental King. Without intending to, or even realizing it was taking place, the pilgrim becomes intimate friends with the sympathetic soul who came alongside in a difficult or frustrating time. The deceiver throws his arm over the traveler's shoulder in true fellowship, steadying him, distracting him from the object of his quest, all the while furtively unbuckling the pilgrim's God-given armor. Together they amble onto a side path and into an isolated place where the devil can uncover his weapon and, from point-blank range plunge his fiery bolts into the unwary traveler's heart.
Yes, this allegory smacks of Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan, which deserves all believers' close examination. So many Christ-followers, especially today, think of the devil as a horrendously ugly and powerful demon. And they envision spiritual warfare as specular exorcisms and blood-sweating intercession for those who are under Satanic attack. While that sort of violent intervention makes heart-pounding novels and movies, however, true spiritual warfare usually involves the enemy slithering into the good guys' trenches and taking on the appearance of an agreeable friend. The lesson here is we must never let our armor slip, even when among friends, even when it seems so heavy we can't march another step without dropping it along the way. Though the war-drums' pounding fills the air and incoming projectiles threaten our very existence, the means of our demise is far more likely to be a knife in the back. Then Paul explains in the most lucid terms, why we must don God's whole armor. This is like the early morning, pre-mission briefing that an officer gives his subordinates, identifying the enemy, clarifying the mission's objectives and rules of engagement, and trying to hype them up with a pep talk. First, the officer/author breaks the news that the enemy they will face is not comprised of the garden variety of brawny, heavily armored, blood-thirsty soldiers. In fact, we won't be going up against common soldiers at all. Today's mission is going to be anything but a cinch as we fight against forces of an entirely different kind. Our generation commonly plays electronic games where we engage a well armed enemy. We enter the fray with virtual particle-beam weapons blasting away any hapless monster that comes against us. We feel powerful, even invenceable; each time he takes us out we pop back up, having suffered nothing but a loss of points and capabilities. For one thing, our enemy is immortal; we can't kill it. And he is powerful in every way we can fear, which loads us down with terror and timidity. What soldier can fight while hunkered down in a corner trying not to be noticed? While his slaughter may be delayed by concealment, it is inevitable. Our true enemy actually holds all temporal, worldly authority in his ugly claws. And his invisible minions bear his delegated authority, an authority usurped from God when Man first chose his own way over the perfect way God had prescribed for him. And his most insidious power, his most dangerous and trusted weapon, is the wickedness of worldly religious authority. We Christ-followers have gotten the idea, diametrically opposed to the truth, that religion in any form is better than irreligion or no religion at all. Somehow we imagine that atheists are the greatest sinners because they desperately oppose the idea of spirituality, the visible trappings, and the influence of religion. But we are wrong ... deadly wrong. If we study Jesus' example of confronting evil, we see that the one evil he most consistantly attacked was the Jewish religious authorities who bent and spun God's law for their own gain, trying—but never quite succeeding—to satiate their own lust for power. How many sects of Christendom began with a nugget of God's truth, made perfectly clear to a man of God by his Holy Spirit through his word? And how many of those sects, or denominations, adopt values and traditions that directly oppose God's revealed will? Too many, that's how many. Christ-followers raised in these denominational traditions become blind to God's truth, when their church paints ever more carnal values over their established mural of truth. Sure, the leadership has wonderful ideas on how to spiff up the Gospel of Christ so as not to offend. And to make it more interesting, they cover that heavenly mural's subtle, inspired tones with the garish, bright colors that saturate our commercial world. Since it is all religiously done in the name of Christ, we impotent-minded lemmings follow right along. The solution? Some Christian fundamentalists would have us indiscriminately reject all of the traditional church's teachings, trappings and traditions as part of its vast apostasy, not realizing that the church's founders were godly men responding to God's Holy Spirit-illuminated word. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of this latter-day reformation, perpetrated by well-meaning, post-modernists, is throwing out the baby of truth concealed by the filthy bath water of humanism. Our only strategy for avoiding religion's human contamination is to nurture our own "baby of truth" to maturity, continuing our steadfast quest, always remaining teachable, and thus, reachable by God's Holy Spirit. Those of us who recognize human religion's error will never succeed in assaulting its ivory-towered bastions by direct confrontation. Religions sear their constituents' minds and hearts against the light of God's word, making them even silver bullet-proof. No, arguing religion with the religious, or the irreligious, is useless. Rather than attacking directly, Christ-followers would more likely succeed by infiltration; guerrilla spiritual warfare. After all, one of our prime directives is, "Let your light shine among men so that they will see your good works and glorify your Heavenly Father." While light dazzles the eyes of those in deep darkness, those who have some spiritual vision might just take a look at the "new guy's" life. Of course, that would mandate living a Christ-like, not necessarily religious, life. If that worries the Christian, however, he may as well plant his body on a pew and take root.

Monday, February 16, 2009

I subscribe to Daily Manna From The Net, and more often than not the daily Bible verse gives me pause to deliberate on some word or principle from God's word. Today, the Bible passage is from Leviticus chapter nineteen, and the verse that caught my eye is You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly. (Lev 19:15 NASB) My usual reaction to a teaching from the Old Testament is, "Oh no, this is gonna be drier than cardboard." Most Bible-believers, whether or not they want to admit it openly, respond more-or-less with that attitude. Of course, simply because lots of folks agree with my prejudice does not mean we're right in our assessment. Leviticus 19:15 is a case in point, with its command, "... you shall not be partial to the poor ...." With my eyebrows suitably raised with indignation, I proceeded to milk more information from the words, and those around them. Know what? This passage is right on the money. God tells us through these words that we must disregard others' money and possessions―or lack thereof―when discerning their veracity. At first glance, this verse seems to fly in the face of Jesus' teaching, from his beatitudes to his treatment of the rich, religious establishment. But that shows what we mortals know. Jesus condemned preferential treatment based on wealth or lifestyle. He urged "sinners" to repent of their wickedness, but he also pronounced woes upon the hyper-religious who would walk a mile to avoid passing by one of the "unclean." The Leviticus passage teaches the same balance that Jesus preached. Apparently, even in ancient Israel, do-gooders practiced their preference for the poor and downtrodden. This bias, however, is every bit as unjust as shining up to the rich and powerful. Jesus called the privileged few, "blind leaders of the blind." He pointed out that each class of people perpetuated their own specialized kind of blindness. The poor were dazzled by the lifestyles flaunted by the affluent, and unable to recognize the rich for what they were, spoiled, and spiritually destitute consumers of wealth. The rich, of course, embraced their blindness to the inate human value of each person, dismissing the poor as an inevitable annoiance, and kowtowing to other rich people hoping to curry their favor. That is not to say the poor had no purpose; God provided "those" people as vehicles for charitable giving. If there were no poor, how would one feel good about giving his or her pittance? The lesson we must take from this passage is neither poverty nor affluence has value in God's eyes, but our righteous response to others' needs reveals God's grace within us.

Monday, February 09, 2009

Psa 139:1 ESV To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. O LORD, you have searched me and known me!

Psalm 139 begins with a statement only a God-lover could make, and not resent it. What solace it is to know that I am known, and there is one Person from whom I cannot hide, one with whom I can communicate honestly, without reproach. That's right, without reproach! When Adam sinned, did God suddenly blast him with a thunder bolt? NO! God walked through the garden in the cool of the day. When Adam failed to run to Him as was his custom, God called out to him. If only Adam had run to his Father/Creator, fallen on his face and confessed his sin in brokenness. But only when he realized he couldn't hide, his first words were an excuse. I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.(Genesis 3:10) Even then, God refrained from condemning Adam. In vs. 11, God said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? Just a question, still leaving Adam the opportunity of confessing his sin. But how did Adam respond to God's grace? The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate. What a lame excuse! Adam, who was intelligent enough to name all the animals of the garden, gave a small child's excuse, as if he was caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Then, as a last resort, so history could not say He failed to give them a chance to confess, God addressed Eve on the issue. Her answer? The serpent deceived me, and I ate. Confession, yes. But with blame, demonstrating she had learned nothing and her heart was hardened to her own guilt. Only then, did God pronounce the judgment we know so well. So, back to King David, a man who could have his every whim, but found it necessary to praise God for the limits, or confinements, of his life. The man whose circumstances knew no limits saw the value of control from without; he knew so well that his self-control was not enough. In Psalm 139:5, he wrote:

You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.

No wonder God named him The man after God's own heart.Father, I too praise you for reigning over me by reining me in before and behind. Your grace is without limit. Your love is beyond knowing. Your peace is a river of life. Your works are marvelous. Yeshua's blood washes me throughout. Thank you, Father.